Some early reaction to Allentown's bike-lane plan

I've been getting some thoughtful and interesting responses to yesterday's column on Allentown's proposal to reduce Linden and Turner streets from two lanes to one in order to add bicycle lanes to each of these one-way city streets.

The prevailing traffic has been in opposition to the bike-lane plan. In fairness, I've selected the lone email in favor of the lanes, and selected one of a half-dozen of the critical comments. (Unfortunately, neither person included their names or the municipalities where they live.)

Finally, I think Steve Rudzinzki's concise comment makes the most sense of all. What, after all, is the big rush?

I think the bike lanes are a great idea. Turner Street has very light traffic, I'm sure it would work fine with one lane. Do you know how the volumes on Turner Street compare to other local roads that only have one lane?

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Road Warrior,

This sounds good in theory, but will end up being an additional sidewalk for strollers, walkers, large groups of kids, small kids riding bikes with few riding skills, more double-parkers, and of course the impatient people driving cars illegally, passing slower traffic, running over anyone using that lane.

Bike lanes in center city Allentown represent a bad idea.

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Hi,

Obvious solution is to table this until after the arena is up, and see how that changes things on the traffic front.

Current Comments

This is one of those 'we know what is good for you' ideas put together by some well intentioned community leaders and residents - mostly people who have moved here from other places. The premise is that riding a bike is a good alternative to driving and that people will climb on their bikes if there is the proper infrastructure. Rather than meet a demand with a solution; these folks look for solutions that will steer people into particular activities. The fact is, that riding a bike is not a viable alternative for the vast majority of people.

Thing is, 99.8% of people gave up their bikes as soon as they could drive and that is the state of the world. Reallocating a portion of the city street to bike lanes with such marginal demand for it is just insane. And oddly enough, half the nuts who cling to their bikes don't believe in bike lanes (bikes should act like cars) while the other half does (lanes are needed to force road-sharing).

If there truly is a need to connect the center city with the parks to the west for bikes and pedestrians, why not find paths through alleys and out of the way thoroughfares instead of encroaching on what are, at times, crowded city streets?

This is what happens when you go out into the community and seek ideas and have no filters or sense of history or proper traffic management concepts in place. The 'anything goes' and 'every idea is a good idea' approach leads to silly actions.

Someone in City Hall needs to act like an adult and say no.

Posted By: JakeHBarnes | Jan 16, 2012 9:42:54 AM

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Morning Call Reporter and Columnist Dan Hartzell is The Road Warrior, defending the drivers of the Lehigh Valley and the roads on which they drive. E-mail questions about transportation in the Lehigh Valley and beyond to hartzell@mcall.com.